Naxals cannot make parallel armies: experts

A New Delhi-bound Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express was released from Naxal clutches by security forces on Tuesday evening, after Naxal-backed tribals stopped it in its path and held its 667 passengers hostage for almost five hours in West Midnapore district. Escorted by a pilot engine, the train, freed by security forces, left the Banstala Halt station for New Delhi.

On the show to debate Face The Nation, a panel of experts discussed the problems that the nation faces in the form of the Naxals who seem to be getting bolder by the day. The panel of experts on the show comprised of:

Senior journalist and Bengal expert, Subir Bhowmick; journalist and veteran communist Naxal sympathiser, Professor Varavara Rao; the Director of the Institute of Peace And Conflict Studies, Major General (Retd) Dipankar Banerjee; political scientist as well as human rights activist, Manoranjan Mohanty and the former DG of the BSF, Prakash Singh.

What do the Naxals want?

Subir Bose felt that the Naxals are trying to project a very human face through their recent activities.

He quoted the instance when an officer-in-charge of Sankrail police station, Atindranath Dutta was held hostage by the Naxals. He highlighted the testimonials by passengers of the Rajdhani on Tuesday as facts that underlined the point that Naxals were kind to people, especially hostages.

Bose said, “It is very clear that the Naxals and the people who are associated with them are in some kind of an image building or image recap mode. After the beheading of Francis Induwar, they got a very bad image.”

Bose felt that the Naxals are bracing themselves for the huge offensive that the Government seems ready to launch. They are trying to raise grass root support for their rebel activities, said Bose.

“Any army; then be it a regular army or a rebel army, a brutalised army is no good as a fighting machine. So the Naxals have belatedly started realising it. Therefore, instead of beheading people, they are trying to create a situation in which they can show that they are in total control of what happens and then of course, they are letting people go,” Bose added.

Varavara Rao disagreed with Bose’s interpretation.

PAGE_BREAK

“It was the PCPA (People’s Committee against Police Atrocities), the Adivasis (tribals) of Midnapore who took the engine drivers with them. They have not kidnapped them, they have not abducted them. They have taken away the engine drivers with them because they wanted to send a message through the passengers of the Rajdhani express it is a prime train,” said Rao.

Clearly, this was an exercise by the Naxals to get the media limelight on them.

“You can see the demands of the people there. They were asking for the withdrawal of the paramilitary forces from the Jangalmahal area and the release of their leader Chhatradhar Mahato,” said Rao, calling the demands of the Naxals as totally legitimate and democratic ones.

Bose said that the PCPA and the Naxals are not different people but a part of the same umbrella group.

Counter-productive police action

Manoranjan Mohanty said the act was a result of escalating violence from the state’s side. He agreed that the incident does not give Naxals any legitimacy. “I think this should be condemned,” Mohanty said.

“I think, their two demands must now be discussed,” Mohanty said. He expressed concern that the way the state has been dealing with the PCPA, it is pushing it towards total identification with the Naxals.

Prakash Singh said he had a different take on the issue.

“Firstly, you have to remember that publicity is the oxygen of all such outfits such as the Naxals. They (Naxals) knew that whatever happens to the Rajdhani, it will attract all-India attention,” said Singh.

The other objective of the Naxals, Singh felt, was to put pressure on civil society to call off the forces.

Mohanty argued that these were tribals and not Naxals.

Singh reiterated that the PCPA is the front face of the Naxals, not a different entity.

Where is West Bengal’s civil administration?

Dipankar Banerjee said the position of some of the panelists shocked him.

“This is a blatant, coercive use of force by a non-recognised armed group against the state. Fortunately, it all ended happily, in the sense that no people have died but it could well have happened,” Banerjee said.

This must stop, Banerjee demanded.

PAGE_BREAK

Political blame game

Bose felt the politicians are making fools of themselves by blaming each other in the episode.

“For five hours Mamata Banerjee kept saying that this is the handiwork of the CPM. Then she suddenly makes an appeal to the Naxals and then the people are freed. Now what is her explanation?” asked Bose.

Bose also blamed the state government for the mess. “Why should the state government, instead of taking tough action against the Naxals, keep blaming the Trinamool?” he asked.

Bose refused to accept that it was a tribal action for the every simple reason that when the security forces were approaching the train, they faced co-ordinated firing from the other side for two and a half hours.

“That was not an action by the tribals carrying the bows and arrows but by trained guerrillas,” he added.

Government, the villain?

Mohanty demanded that we must find out why so many tribals in many parts of India have resorted to armed struggle.

Singh said he did not dispute the root cause theory that Mohanty proposed but it does not justify taking the law in one’s hands and holding the state to a ransom.

“For many years, this root cause theory was the justification for terrorism. Then the United Nations Security Council settled this debate. It said that whatever be the cause, social or ethnic, terrorism is still a crime,” Singh said.

Varavara Rao accused the Government of harbouring an industrial blueprint for the tribal belts. “By saying that the Naxals are turning the forests of this country into a red corridor, it is the Government who is turning the forests right from Jangal Mahal in West Bengal to Vijaynagar district of Andhra Pradesh into an industrial corridor,” Rao said.

Bose agreed with Rao and Mohanty that you cannot overlook basic causes.

“The Communists, which ruled Bengal and various other parties who have been in and out of power, did not understand the tribals. They were completely left out of the land reforms,” Bose said, reiterating that unless issues are looked at closely, it will only send in the Naxals who will exploit an agenda.

Singh conceded that the Government has been inefficient and had failed in alleviating poverty.

PAGE_BREAK

“All that, I concede. But does that mean that we will establish a parallel government? Does it mean we will establish a parallel army?” asked Singh.

Parallel state

Dipankar Banerjee agreed that the Government may have been amiss in its governance. “But at the same time, to accept that any body with disaffection to the state or with any grievance can take up arms, is unacceptable,” Banerjee said.

Mohanty wanted the nature of the discourse changed and toned down. He said he wanted an unconditional dialogue between the Government and the Naxals.

“This whole violence started with the Prime Minister describing the Naxals as a principal security threat to the nation. I mean, as if we do not have Hindutva, poverty and dismal growth records. Then the Home Minister said that you must clear the space for development…The West Bengal chief minister has said, “We will teach them a lesson.” Look at the discourse. May I request that we must kindly tone it down? We must talk about democracy, people’s rights rather than violence and confrontation,” Mohanty said.

Singh disagreed with the dialogue theory. “I must say, the Indian democracy is very indulgent, very accommodating. These people are talking of state terror. Let us for a moment assume that there was a Naxal government in India; the Naxalites would have been decimated, the north east insurgents would have been steamrolled and the Hurriyat people would have been in life imprisonment,” he concluded.

The debates whether Naxals are terrorists or orphans of the new Indian economy rages on.